The New Rules of Frontline Hiring

Welcome to the Vantage Influencers Podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Vantage Circle, the simple and effective recognition platform for employee engagement.

Sanjeevani Saikia: Frontline hiring has always been fast-paced, but lately it feels like we're in the middle of a complete reset. Candidates are choosing jobs differently, expectations are shifting, and I believe the old playbooks really aren't holding up anymore. So even with better tools, more data, and smarter strategies, companies, I believe, are still struggling to attract and keep frontline talent. So clearly something deeper is going on beneath the surface. And to break this down with us, I'm joined by someone who has been watching these changes unfold in real time, Trent Cotton, head of talent acquisition insights and analyst relations at iCIMS. Trent, I'm so glad to have you with us today. Thanks for being here.

Trent Cotton: Thank you for inviting me here to get through this meaty topic.

Sanjeevani Saikia: It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Before we dive into the heart of our conversation, could you share a bit about your professional journey so far and what shaped the work you're doing now?

Trent Cotton: All right, so I have been in the HR space for roughly 22 years. I actually got into it coming out of being a banker. Loved banking, but just got kind of bored with it and started in recruiting. And 22 years later, here I am. I've worked across industries, across enterprise to startup, and most recently joined iCIMS as the head of talent insights and analyst relations. So our talent insights program, we put out a free monthly workforce report and two anchor reports every year, completely free. We really believe that our data and our insights enable the recruiting industry to be able to craft a very successful recruiting strategy. So every month that we put it out, I'm like, God, I wish we would have had this whenever I was a practitioner. So it's a fun job, never a dull moment, especially in this job market that we have now.

Sanjeevani Saikia: Incredible. Thank you so much for sharing your journey with me and our listeners. Now with your permission, I'd like to delve into the topic today, frontline hiring. When we talk about frontline hiring today, it just doesn't feel like the same landscape we were looking at even a few years ago. The urgency is higher, the expectations have really shifted, and candidates seem to navigate the process with a very different mindset now. And honestly, it kind of makes me wonder what changed underneath all the obvious things we keep hearing about. So what do you think is this shift in frontline hiring today compared to a few years ago?

Trent Cotton: All right. So my real passion is marketing. That was my major, and it took me 25 years to actually get into a marketing department. But I've always been obsessed with consumer behavior, like the psychology about what makes someone buy something, what makes them fall in love and become fans of brands. And I think that this shift in the frontline hiring candidate experience, at least on the expectation part, is largely driven by the buying experience that most of us have outside of going and applying for a job. So if you think about it, you've got Amazon, you've got Etsy, you've got now ChatGPT interacting with Etsy. So if you find something doing an AI search, you can actually buy it right there in the platform. So the entire buyer experience is changing, and it's changing fast. Unfortunately, the candidate experience on the HR tech side has not really kept pace, but I think that we're really starting to see a lot of candidates going, why can't it be easier? And so I think that's been a huge driving force in what we're seeing in frontline hiring on the candidate side. And on the manager side, I don't know that a lot has changed. I just think that they have gotten a lot more vocal, and they have come to expect more out of recruiting. And I think that's where we're seeing a lot of the struggle between what the candidate expectations are and how quickly they're changing. In our recent frontline hiring report, which was one of our free anchor reports this year, we actually determined through the data that 91% of managers said that hiring on frontline is urgent. And also, I think it was like 68% of them say the application process is easy. But then if you go and ask the candidates, it's completely different. So I think that disconnect is really adding a lot of gasoline to a fire that's been lit for years.

Sanjeevani Saikia: So you just mentioned that 91% of managers say frontline hiring is urgent, and that most of them think the application process is easy. Why do you think there's this disconnect? Why is the gap there?

Trent Cotton: As a hiring manager, usually whenever you get in there, you don't go and actually go through the application process as a candidate. So you have no knowledge, you think it's easy, until you're actually in that boat where you're having to upload a resume, and then it's supposed to do a partial resume fill, but then you get in there and it's like, why am I having to enter in everything again into this application? Why are they asking me all of these questions? The user experience is very 2010 versus what a lot of people are accustomed to now, at least from the buying experience. So I think it's just a lack of awareness from a hiring manager of what candidates are actually experiencing.

Sanjeevani Saikia: Okay, I understand. Now building on that, it's interesting because many companies still assume that offering a competitive wage should solve half the problem, but clearly it's not working that way anymore. Candidates seem to be thinking about work through a much more personal, nuanced lens, almost like they're choosing a lifestyle, not just a job. So I'm really curious about what's driving that. What deeper factors beyond pay do you think are influencing frontline candidates' decisions now?

Trent Cotton: In our frontline hiring report, we actually looked at a couple of different sectors, but the overarching theme is the real fixes to the process. You need role clarity, and you also need pay transparency. That's different than paying something competitive. It's actually putting it on the job description. This is kind of a moment, I think, whenever I read the data point, but it makes a lot of sense. There have been times in my career where I've applied for a job and I thought, oh my God, this is going to be such a great job. Then I get on the phone with a recruiter, spend 45 minutes going through the interview, and I ask them at the end, what's the compensation range? And it's 20 to 30,000 dollars less than what I was making at the time. That's a waste of time for me. It's a waste of time for the recruiter. And unfortunately, that's going on a lot in the process. Whereas if you were to just say the range is between here and here, I can look at it and go, that sounds like a great job, but I can't really make that kind of a cut. I go and find something that's actually within the compensation range of what I need to be able to support my family and me. So role clarity is another one, not job description, but role clarity. What are they going to be doing? What are the expectations? What's the next step for them? You get into this role, it can take you here, it can take you here, it's preparing you for this. And especially on frontline hiring, some of the things that, in my opinion, made me the most successful, I learned in a frontline role. I learned at a grocery store. I learned working as a teller, basic customer service, communication, critical thinking, problem solving. All of those things have just been in relationship management. All of those have been a very common theme throughout my career, but I learned them in frontline hiring. And Dot Lynch, I will never forget her. She actually recruited me to work as a teller for a bank whenever I was working at a grocery store. She came through my line and she was like, you have great customer service, you're very fast, you're very efficient. All these little things that she translated into, I think you'd be a great teller. And whenever I interviewed for the role, I was like, so what does this role do? They explained it, but they said, this is the base for you to go here, to go here, to go here. And I fell in love with banking in that interview. And I think that's a huge missed opportunity that hiring managers on the frontline are missing, whenever all they're doing is, do you have this, do you have this, okay cool, let's move to the next step. I think that really getting in and painting a picture of where that can go, I think that's a lot around the role clarity that we see in the data, that candidates want in the process.

Sanjeevani Saikia: Yeah, I think you've highlighted a very significant point, the significance of role clarity over job description. That's going to be a great takeaway from this response of yours. Now, something that keeps coming up in this whole conversation is, again, technology. We have positioned tech as the thing that will kind of fix frontline hiring, automate, streamline, even simplify, for that matter, but on the ground it often ends up feeling like one more hurdle rather than a helper. So I'd love to unpack that tension a bit, because it's clearly shaping the hiring experience for both sides. So how can companies use technology in a way that actually speeds up frontline hiring rather than slowing it down?

Trent Cotton: Actually, I'm going to change the question a little bit. I think that question you asked is what everyone's trying to solve, but I think we're trying to solve the wrong problem. Let's go back to the buying experience. You go into Amazon, you search, you go and look at the reviews. Now you've got a shopping assistant that you can go and ask some questions about the product, about the reviews. And then you go, you know what, I want to go ahead and buy this, and you can buy now, or buy with one click, or add it to your cart and keep going. That's an experience. So just think about all the different tools that I've touched. I did the search, I did the product page, I looked at the reviews, I engaged AI. I could have been doing that buying process for 20 minutes, but it did not feel like 20 minutes. It was not fill in the SKU of the product that you found on the other page, go in and put in your name, put in your address, put in your card, put in this, put in that. Twenty minutes of that, for me, two or three minutes into that, I'm out and I'm like, God, this is too complicated. But that's what we're putting candidates through. So my pushback to your question is actually, it's not necessarily tech that's slowing hiring down and making it more complicated. I think that we're not looking at the experience. So why couldn't an application process be conversational, on text, on WhatsApp, on the web? Hey, John Smith, so glad that you're interested in this role, tell me a little bit about your last role, and I can dictate it, I can answer it, and it's pulling all the necessary information out. And then it pops up five or ten minutes later and it says, okay, here's everything I learned about you, take a look, make sure that I've got your profile correct. Because what's happening also in frontline hiring is a lot of the candidates, they don't have this long resume. You don't need a long resume for most frontline roles. You need to know, do they have the critical skills, do they have the soft skills in order to be successful. That can be accomplished in a conversational AI type of platform. And I think that's solving the right problem.

Sanjeevani Saikia: Sure. Now shifting gears, it brings me to something I personally find super important. What happens after the offer? Because frontline roles see some of the highest early turnover, and yet we don't talk enough about how those first few days shape how long someone stays. It's almost like engagement begins way before performance does. I feel like we need to sit with that for a bit, so help us understand, how can HR teams design hiring and onboarding experiences that build long-term engagement from day one itself?

Trent Cotton: So I like to use the analogy that when you get married, you say I do, but you shouldn't be done dating, courting, nurturing that relationship. I mean, if you don't do all those things, I do eventually becomes I'm done. I think that we should take that same type of approach to the offer and the onboarding process. What happens is they sign the offer letter and then they don't hear anything until day one. They go through this laborious orientation and maybe some on-the-job training, and then they're just left. And it always amazes me how organizations are so surprised that turnover was so high in those types of roles, because you just kind of dumped them out there. We're missing that relationship, we're missing that continuous courting. And it starts with, yes, I will accept the job. Now this is where technology can provide a pretty significant lift, and we're not even talking about AI, we're talking about some sophisticated automation. So I accept, and in 24 hours, let's say I get an email that's got a link to a video that's talking about our culture and what to expect on day one. And then maybe two days after that, I get a link to the swag store, and I get a hundred dollar gift certificate. I can go and buy the swag that I want to, not a keychain and something else that I'll throw away whenever I get home, but maybe a polo, maybe I've got my own little branded cup here. Those are things that I'll actually use during the day that are branded. A message from my boss, a message from the CEO. There's so many things that could be done in that week or two that it takes to get someone actually to day one, that helps them become immersed in the role. And one of my friends in the industry, she is now a CHRO for a very large global food distributor, and she told the story two years ago that they decided to do for their jobs, speaking of role clarity, they did videos. It was actually done by the employees at the warehouse for the job. And there was one where they were kind of walking through, and it's like, here's the meat section, here's the freezer, here's Sally, here's Harry. It was cute. They knew that it hit whenever they had someone that started and they said, hey, I need to go use the restroom, and the manager's like, well, you're going to go here. He goes, no, no, I know where it is, I saw it in the video. And as he's walking, he goes, hey Harry, hey Sally. He started day one already feeling like he got a virtual introduction to everyone. And it was just a very common video. So I do think that there's going to be a huge lift just in the onboarding experience, getting them immersed. After day one, we should immediately go, I know this is your first 30 days, but here's all the different things in the company that you have access to be able to do. So let's use something that I'm familiar with, working as a bank teller. So you start as a teller, day 30, imagine getting an email with a little bot that says, hey Trent, welcome, I hope you've had a great first 30 days, give me a quick rating. On a scale of one to five, how's your first 30 days been? What can we improve on? What was really great? Okay, cool, now let's talk about you. Here are all the different career trajectories that you can go in the company. Where do you want to go? I select one, it has access to my resume because I just started with the company, and it has all of the job requirements, and it starts analyzing and saying, hey, this is a really good fit for you, here are a couple of different gaps. Do you agree that these are gaps between here and here? Yeah, yeah, I agree with them. All right, cool, now I'm connected to the LMS, I'm going to go ahead and assign you some of these learnings so that way you can go ahead and start getting a jump. And if you do everything right, you should be able to have the required skills, at least on paper, maybe not the experience, but the skills in the next year. I have access to your calendar as well, do you want me to go ahead and schedule 30 minutes a week for you to take one of these courses that should keep you on track? Imagine that kind of an experience for a frontline worker. So someone that comes to work in a hotel at the front desk and they ultimately one day want to be a hospitality manager. Well, now day 30, I've got this awesome career plan and all I got to do is do it. And then you're literally giving the keys to the kingdom to the employee on day 30. That's what's going to enhance onboarding while also fixing your retention issue.

Sanjeevani Saikia: Yeah, that's well said. This may sound a little out of context, but I need to ask you something regarding how an HR practitioner, a hiring department, a hiring team's attitude towards frontline candidates should be. The reason I'm asking you this is, recently I had a talk with one HR practitioner, and they went on saying that, oh, I did a frontline hiring interview once, and I actually made the candidate wait for one hour just to see how patient he would be.

Trent Cotton: Are you kidding me?

Sanjeevani Saikia: I'm not kidding, that's a fact. And that is why I'm asking you this question, because I found it really, you are wasting one hour of this candidate just to prove a point about whether that person will be patient or not. So I really want to understand, how should an HR practitioner behave while hiring these candidates? Because in their mind, it's like, we were just doing a frontline hiring, so they have this attitude.

Trent Cotton: I need to calm down, because I can hear my pulse in my head hearing this. That's malpractice, okay? You need to change. That infuriates me. I am sorry. Those types of professionals in the HR industry are what give HR such an awful name, and it causes those of us that actually do approach the job with a little bit of dignity and ownership, it really makes it hard for the rest of us. So anyway, I hope that person gets out of HR very soon. But what you need to do is look at your frontline hiring as this is your future workforce. If we're looking at some of the macro trends that are going on, there's going to be a huge shift in the workforce. Prior to this, IQ used to drive a lot of teams. Who was the smartest? Who had the most experience? Who had the highest intelligence? That's going to be leveled out a little bit with AI, because technically, as AI continues to evolve, I'll be able to bring someone in who doesn't necessarily have the knowledge, but they know how to work with agents, they know how to orchestrate, they have critical thinking, they have strategic thinking, and they get along great, and they can communicate and work across functions. I don't really need them to know where to find all this information, because AI is going to go and pull it in for them. I need them to be able to digest and act on it. That future workforce starts on the frontline. That's where your people learn: here's who my customer is, here's what they want, here's the experience that they're looking for. Now you take that experience that someone on the frontline had and put it into product, it's a completely different thought process, then their design thinking really is design thinking, because they've been on the frontline, they know what it's like. So whenever I worked in banking and managed talent acquisition for banking, and our high volume, which was a lot of the branch banking stuff, I understood what it was like because I was a teller, I was a desk person, I was an auditor, I worked operations, I ran branches and ran regions of branches. So I could empathize with that. To me, I think it made me a better HR individual because I had that empathy, and not just for the employees, but also for our clients. Those are our clients, those people are the face of your organization. So if you don't understand that the face of your organization largely rests with your frontline workers, you are completely missing your objective.

Sanjeevani Saikia: Yes, again, Trent, very well said and on point. We are reaching the end of today's episode. I don't want to wrap up without looking into the future, because if we zoom out a bit, the frontline workforce is going through a massive identity shift. Expectations are changing, industries are rewriting their playbooks, and honestly, the next two or three years might look nothing like the last. So before we end this conversation, I'd really love to understand what's coming next. What emerging trends do you believe will redefine the frontline hiring landscape in the next two or three years?

Trent Cotton: Well, we actually already answered it. It's career pathing, day one through 30, set it out, give them the keys, provide the infrastructure. And that's how you're going to be able to maximize all of the effort that you're putting into frontline hiring. You're going to be able to reap the ROI on the back end, because you're creating your future workforce. And it starts with laying out what the career possibilities are during the interview, during the job, even in the job description, that role clarity again. The data in our frontline hiring report says role clarity and pay transparency are what candidates want the most. And right behind that is flexible schedules. So if you can get all three of those, and then you tack on skills development and career pathing, and you do it within the first, let's just say even 90 days, leveraging some of the technology that's out there, I think that's going to keep you ahead of the wave of changes coming in the workforce, especially whenever it comes to frontline hiring.

Sanjeevani Saikia: Yeah, thank you so much, you've responded very beautifully to all the questions that we had, and I'm sure our listeners will benefit. We have reached the end of today's episode. Any message for our listeners?

Trent Cotton: Absolutely. Please, please, please go to iCIMS.com, click on resources, and then go to talent insights. All of our reports are there every month. We usually try to put it out around the second week of the month. And this is data that you're going to need to give you the insights to be able to create that successful recruiting strategy that's going to help you deal with some of the issues that we talked about on this particular episode.

Sanjeevani Saikia: Thank you so much once again, Trent, for joining us in this episode. We're really, really grateful.

Trent Cotton: Thanks a lot. Not a problem. Thank you for having me.